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Gerber, A.S., and Green, D.P. (2000). The Effects of Canvassing, Telephone Calls, and Direct Mail on Voter Turnout: A Field Experiment. American Political Science Review 94:3, 653-663

Background:

Modern campaigns have less face-to-face contact, more phone, mailers etc. being used with a drop in the related numbers of adults who work for a political party along with a decline in civic organization participation – has contributed to lower voter turnout numbers since the 1960’s (pg. 653)

Hypothesis: personal canvasing is more effective that other methods for spurring voter turnout (pg. 653)

Direct Mail (pg. 656)
• Intended to measure turnout effect of both number of mailings and message
• First effect: treatment divided by three, sent one, two, or three mailings respectively
o Subgroup = 4,900 persons (x3 groups)
o Interval: group one: 15,13,8 group two: 13,8 group 3: 8 days before election
o Subgroups (x3), one for each type of message matching canvasing and mail message
o Nine postcards used to present same message (layout, color, style same for all)

Telephone calls (pg. 656):
• Done the three days before the election
• Sunday evening, Monday and Tuesday all day
• 30 second scripted calls
• Scripts mirrored those of the canvasing (civic duty and close election)
• Neighborhood solidarity dropped due to implausibility from using out of state phone bank
• Survey Sample Inc. used to conduct, cross-checked phone numbers, still many wrong numbers
• Treatment group: 2,100 of 6,700 (32%) completion rate

Results (pgs. 657-661)
• Tables show basic findings on personal canvassing
• Regression analysis to confirm results with more statistical precision
o All treatments taken into account
o Covariates (past data) can be used

Conclusions (pgs. 661,662)
• Canvasing for greater influence on voter turnout
• Phone banks least effective influence on voter turnout
• Hypothesis = “on the road to confirmation”
o Falling rates of voter turnout reflect a decline in face-to-face political activity
• Unanswered questions:
o Partisan mobilization, this experiment was nonpartisan, similar pattern?
o small but discernible effect of direct mail may offset some of the decline in personal mobilization (face-to-face)
• Further research:
o For generalizability of results
o Other settings, other types of elections
o Very little known about personal contact mechanisms
• Importance of work/experiment:
o Clues on why voter turnout has declined
♣ Some individuals won’t vote without face-to-face contact, personal encouragement
o Focus on costs as well as personal connection for voting process
• Final question:
o “The question is whether the long-term decay of civic and political organizations has reached such a point that our society no longer has the infrastructure to conduct face-to-face canvassing on a large scale” (pg. 662)